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> There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Just for fun: Humans have added ~1 trillion tonnes of CO2 to

> There's one significant thing they're achieving here: putting a price on CO2 in the atmosphere. Just for fun: Humans have added ~1 trillion tonnes of CO2 to the atmosphere over 200 years, taking atmospheric CO2 from 275 to 407 ppm by volume. Ongoing emissions are around 36 billion tonnes (2015). Climeworks apparently costs $600/tonne of CO2[1], with 10 year goal of $100/tonne (although skeptics estimate it really costs closer to $1,000, but I see no reason to believe them either). So the total cost would be $100 trillion to $1 quadrillion dollars to reverse climate change (this would be about a 50% overestimate since ~30% of emissions are anti-greenhouse aerosols), and the ongoing cost would be $3.6 trillion to $36 trillion. Over 80 years that would come to $4.85-$48.5 trillion annually, while the nominal GDP is currently just under $80 trillion. So 6% to 62% of annual GDP. The total cost to transition the entire world to solar power including all heat, industrial and burning oil would be <$40 trillion, for reference. NB that's a very high level estimate with error ~= 50% [1]: https://www.carbonbrief.org/swiss-company-hoping-capture-1-global-co2-emissions-2025 https://www.carbonbrief.org/swiss-company-hoping-capture-1-g...

lubujackson 9y ago
That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). The real problem is that it costs a lot and captialism shows no quarterly gains for preserving humanity. The best bet would be to have an international contribution agreement that ties something like defense spending to CO2 reduction. Fat chance of that happening, but it could really improve two situations at once.
- hwillis 9y ago
  > Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). Well... Technically possible, yeah. One of the more expensive projects the US has ever done is the Apollo project, which was a bit over $20 billion annually in todays money, or .1% of GDP. Even building the nuclear arsenal was only $100 billion annually. So as a country the best we've managed is .5% of GDP, against the much more politically actionable threat of the USSR. A 1-2 order of magnitude increase over that is pretty unlikely. Hell, global defense spending in 2016 was only 1.6 trillion.

lubujackson 9y ago

That's a great back-of-the-envelope calculation. Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). The real problem is that it costs a lot and captialism shows no quarterly gains for preserving humanity. The best bet would be to have an international contribution agreement that ties something like defense spending to CO2 reduction. Fat chance of that happening, but it could really improve two situations at once.

hwillis 9y ago
> Main takeaway is that it is probably solveable, but only by government-scale efforts (philanthropy can't cover it). Well... Technically possible, yeah. One of the more expensive projects the US has ever done is the Apollo project, which was a bit over $20 billion annually in todays money, or .1% of GDP. Even building the nuclear arsenal was only $100 billion annually. So as a country the best we've managed is .5% of GDP, against the much more politically actionable threat of the USSR. A 1-2 order of magnitude increase over that is pretty unlikely. Hell, global defense spending in 2016 was only 1.6 trillion.